Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg
Making destiny manifest: United States territorial
expansion and the dispossession of two Mexican
property claims in New Mexico, 1824–1899
David Correia
University of Maine, 270 Main Street, Farmington, ME 04938, USA
Abstract
In the aftermath of the war of expansion against Mexico, the United States undertook a lengthy adjudication process of Spanish and Mexican property claims throughout the newly acquired territory. In New
Mexico, nearly all Spanish and Mexican community land grants were either rejected by U.S. courts or were
acquired by commercial interests during a period of intense land speculation. In addition to legal explanations of dispossession, most historical land grant research has emphasized the role of commercial speculators in the dispossession of land grants. The Santa Fe Ring, a loose affiliation of lawyers, politicians, federal
and territorial officials and commercial investors, became a potent political and economic force in New
Mexico during the 19th century. This article explores the adjudication and speculation histories of two
Mexican property claims: the Petaca and Town of Vallecito de Lovato. The dearth of historical knowledge
of the practices and tactics of land dispossession in specific New Mexico land grants continues to obscure
the full story of U.S. territorial expansion and the history of the transformation in property relations. This
article sheds new light on the extent and intensity of commercial speculation and the contribution of those
efforts to undermine legitimate claims.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: New Mexico; Manifest destiny; Colonialism; Land grants; Law
In the mid-1840s, the exceptionalist rhetoric of Manifest Destiny, particularly among Jacksonian
Democrats, provided momentum for the 1846 military invasion of Mexico by the United States. Mexico stood in the way of a continental Unites States that war boosters described as inevitable. Using
E-mail address: [email protected]
0305-7488/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2008.02.002
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
claims of Mexican backwardness and the promises of American Progress, expansionists sought to
impose a moral economy of production in the region dominated by free-hold yeoman farmers.
On the eve of war, General Steven Kearney and the Army of the West, camped along the Arkansas River, issued a proclamation to the Mexican citizens of the Mexican territory of Nuevo Mexico
explaining that the coming invasion was ‘for the purpose of seeking union with and ameliorating
the condition if its inhabitants.’1 The invasion that followed culminated in the annexation of nearly
half of the Mexican nation and produced a continental United States. This paper examines the consequences of U.S. territorial expansion for preexisting property claims in New Mexico through
a case study of the adjudication of two Mexican-era community land grants in what is today northern New Mexico. Far from ameliorating the conditions of New Mexico inhabitants, as Kearney
promised, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ushered in a tumultuous period of property expropriation and common property enclosures that transformed property relations in the region.
The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the adjudication of Mexican property claims
The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February 1848 ended the war and cost
Mexico 525,000 square miles, nearly half of its territorial extent. With the sweep of a pen, the
Mexican North became the American Southwest. Though the treaty provided that Spanish and
Mexican grants would be inviolably respected by the United States, the U.S. deleted Article X
from the treaty, a provision that would have imposed a prima facie obligation on the United
States to recognize all preexisting property rights in the region. Without Article X, the United
States was free to design an adjudication process of its own choosing.
Much has been written on land tenure and the adjudication of Spanish and Mexican claims in
what is today California. Much of the scholarship on Spanish settlement, Mexican independence,
and the economic and social incorporation of California into the United States has focused on
analyses of settlement patterns, new land tenure arrangements and public land policies, commercial speculation, natural resource exploitation, and class conflict.2 Much less work has focused on
New Mexico, despite the persistence of historic, and unresolved, claims regarding the disposition
and ownership of adjudicated Spanish and Mexican claims.3 Indeed, no political issue in New
1
R. Ellis (Ed), New Mexico Historic Documents, Albuquerque, 1975.
D.J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: the American Southwest under Mexico, Albuquerque, 1982;
D. Hornbeck, The patenting of California’s private land claims, 1851–1885, The Geographical Review 69 (1979) 434–
448; D. Hornbeck, Land tenure and rancho expansion in Alta California, 1784–1846, Journal of Historical Geography
4 (1978) 371–390; D. Vaught, A tale of three land grants on the northern California Borderlands, Agricultural History
78 (2004) 140–154; R. Walker, California’s golden road to riches: natural resources and regional capitalism, 1848–1940,
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91 (2001); R. Sauder, Patenting an arid frontier: use and abuse of the
public land laws in Owens valley, California, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 79 (1989) 544–569.
3
R. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roots of Resistance: a History of Land Tenure in New Mexico, Norman, 2007; M. Ebright, Land
Grants and Lawsuits in Northern New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1994; S.S. Forrest, The Preservation of the Village: New
Mexico’s Hispanics and the New Deal, Albuquerque, 1989; P. Gonzalez, Struggle for survival: the Hispanic land grants
of New Mexico, 1848–2001, Agricultural History, 77 (2003) 293–324; R. Rosenbaum and R.W. Larson, Mexican resistance to the expropriation of grant lands in New Mexico, in: C. Briggs and J. Van Ness (Eds), Land, Water, and Culture:
New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants, Albuquerque, 1987; A.R. Sunseri, Seeds of Discord: New Mexico in the
Aftermath of the American Conquest, 1846–1861, Chicago, 1979.
2
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
89
Mexico is more explosive, or long lived, than the question of whether the United States fairly adjudicated Spanish and Mexican land claims following the Mexican American War. In 2000, the
New Mexico congressional delegation directed the General Accounting Office (GAO), the research arm of the U.S. Congress, to examine the adjudication of Spanish and Mexican land claims
following the War with Mexico with an eye to providing recommendations for a final resolution.
The subsequent GAO report emphasized what historians of 19th century New Mexico have long
said. The years between the end of the War in 1848 and statehood in 1912 were a period of social
upheaval and political uncertainty as U.S. land policy, property law and commercial land speculation transformed the region’s common-property Spanish-derived land tenure into fee-simple,
private property ownership. A recent study by historian Maria Montoya of the large Mexican-period Maxwell land grant emphasized the imperial nature of the struggle for land in New Mexico.4
The failure of U.S. courts to properly translate Spanish or Mexican land policies arose, she argued, from the commercial, colonialist motivations of the United States ‘The U.S. government
acted in imperial and colonial ways that mimicked its European counterparts.’5 The U.S.-designed
land grant adjudication placed the burden of proof on the communities of Spanish-speaking, subsistence claimants. The process proved almost impossible for all but moneyed interests to navigate. The adjudication of property claims served the interests of commercial speculators and
ushered in a period of rural enclosures. The commercial, legal and political practices and structures of territorial New Mexico mimicked, to use Montoya’s word, the practices of European
imperialism.
The practices of colonialism opened a space for commercial speculation and resource expropriation, and in doing so produced intractable legal disputes over land. Historians of 19th century
New Mexico have closely examined the social consequences of land loss. Land grant scholar Malcolm Ebright has shown how the failure of the United States to meet its treaty obligations
stemmed from the collision of two vastly different legal and judicial systems and forms of property
relations. ‘The main reason for [land loss]’ he argued, ‘was that the land grants were established
under one legal system and adjudicated under another.’6 Territorial administration in New Mexico created extended legal and social conflicts that G. Emlen Hall described as a ‘colossal confusion in land administration.’7 One estimate suggested that nearly 80% of all legitimate Spanish
and Mexican community land grants were lost to corrupt officials, a poorly designed adjudication
system or commercial speculators.8
Subsistence Spanish and Mexican land-grant communities owned extensive and valuable grazing, mining and timberlands in New Mexico. Their property claims and subsistence livelihoods
were in the way of commercial exploitation. The logic of colonial expansion was expressed
through the application of land policies that privileged private property arrangements over Spanish and Mexican common property. The establishment of these new property relations was
accomplished through the on-the-ground practices of a cadre of lawyers, commercial speculators
4
M. Montoya, Translating Property: the Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840–
1900, Berkeley, 2002.
5
Montoya, Translating Property (note 4), 9.
6
Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits (note 3), 3.
7
G.E. Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos: a Legal History of the Pecos Grant, 1800–1933, Albuquerque, 1984, 367.
8
V. Westphall, The Public Domain in New Mexico, 1854–1891, Albuquerque, 1965, 49.
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
and territorial officials. While much is known about the impact of U.S. land policies on the adjudication of Spanish and Mexican claims, much less is known about the practices of speculation
in specific New Mexico land grants. Thus, I focus on the process of adjudication as a mechanism
of resource expropriation. As Cole Harris has suggested, ‘at these sites of colonial dispossession, it
seems particularly fruitful to ask by what means [dispossession] came about.’9
In this paper, I examine the adjudication of two Mexican-era community land grants, the Town
of Vallecito de Lovato and La Petaca. These contiguous grants, nestled in the Ponderosa Pine forests of northern New Mexico’s Tusas Mountains, were at the center of almost four decades of
struggle over legal control. Those struggles occurred both inside and outside the official procedures for adjudication. A detailed examination of the adjudication of Petaca and Vallecito illustrates the lasting legacy of on-the-ground struggles for control of the land grant among settlers,
commercial speculators and government officials. Such a focus provides a fuller accounting of the
contested and contingent nature of U.S. colonial practices and territorial expansion, themes of
particular importance to historical geographers of 19th century North America. This study also
seeks to contribute to land grant research on the particular histories and political geographies
of territorial New Mexico and highlights more general processes in the revolution in land tenure,
resource use and settlement in New Mexico that severed subsistence communities from the common property resources upon which they depended.
Mexican settlement in Nuevo Mexico: Petaca and Vallecito
Under both Spain and Mexico, community grants in New Mexico were dispersed following
a general pattern. A petitioner, or small group of petitioners, would represent a larger community
requesting from the Territorial Governor a grant of land to establish a new village. The Governor
would direct the local political chief, the Alcalde, to investigate for any adverse claims on the land.
If the subsequent report supported the petition, the Governor would direct the Alcalde to place
the settlers in possession of the grant. The grant papers, or muniments, reflected this three-part
process. The petition described the grant, often listing only the name of the representative, leaving
the rest of the community unnamed. An additional paper, signed by the Governor, directed the
Alcalde to make an investigation. A third paper placed the settlers in possession. Under both
Spanish and Mexican law, the official archives retained one copy of the muniments, while the recipients possessed a second copy. Despite precise legal standards under both Spain and Mexico,
the actual production of the muniments—the wording, the structure and the format—differed according to local customs, and changed across space and over time. This often meant that each
land grant reflected an idiosyncratic representation of Mexican grant making.10
The granting of the Town of Vallecito de Lovato in 1824 and of La Petaca in 1836 were idiosyncratic but reflected this general pattern. Vallecito was granted to a group of 24 settlers during
a tumultuous period in Mexican history. Just years after Mexico’s independence from Spain, New
9
C. Harris, How did colonialism dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (2004) 167.
10
Weber, The Mexican Frontier (note 2); Ebright, New Mexican land grants: the legal background, in: C. Van Ness
and J. Van Ness (Eds), Land, Water, and Culture (note 3).
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
91
Mexico’s political and economic landscape was in flux, particularly regarding the administration
and disposition of land grants. Though land grant making continued between 1821, when Mexico
declared its independence, and 1824 when Mexico first promulgated land codes to govern the distribution of land, the interim processes were a Spanish and Mexican hybrid that resulted in irregular grant documents based on uniquely local forms of grant making. Just days after the Vallecito
petition, the Territorial Governor issued a decree—left unsigned—granting the land to ‘Jose Rafael Samora, together with the twenty-five individuals in his petition.’11 The local Alcalde officially
placed the petitioners in possession of the grant, measuring out solares, or private home sites,
along the Rio Ojo Caliente where the village would be established.
A series of land transfers after 1830 demonstrate that the community met the requirements of
Spanish settlement.12 In addition, the deed transfers provide further proof that the community
was organized around communal management of the uplands, as each conveyance transferred
not only private property, but also the rights and obligations for access to the resources on the
common uplands.13
The pattern of settlement from the granting of Vallecito in 1824 to the arrival of U.S. troops in
1846 is not entirely clear, although deed transfers and testimony before the Surveyor General, and
later the Court of Private Land Claims show that the Vallecito de Lovato was continuously settled
from the date of possession in 1824 until 1844, when villages throughout the north fled the Tusas
Mountains to escape a region-wide escalation of Mexican-Ute hostilities precipitated by a Mexican militia attack on a Ute and Navajo party.14
The Petaca settlers followed a similar path to grant ownership. In March 1836, after an official
request, 36 petitioners, led by three named peititoners, walked the boundary of the Petaca land
grant with the Alcalde of Abiquiu.15 As they walked, the Alcalde measured out the small, private
home lots along the Rio Petaca. The men and their families celebrated their grant and ‘plucked up
herbs, leaped, cast stones, and shouted with joy.’16 As was the custom and practice of community
land grant making in the period, the individual lots came in addition to a large commons suitable
for community grazing, hunting, gathering, and collecting. According to Petaca grant documents,
grantees understood ‘that the pastures, forests, waters, and watering places are in common.’17
While title to private lots, or solares, were transferable after a short period of continuous settlement, under Spanish law, and local custom, the commons could not be severed from the grant.
The Petaca grant documents named Vallecito as its Western boundary.
The pattern of settlement in the decade after 1836 is not as clear in Petaca as it is in Vallecito.
From the beginning, settlers clashed with nomadic Indian tribes in the region and appear to have
abandoned Petaca briefly in 1844.18 In 1848, as the American military presence ended Ute
11
27 February 1824 order of Governor Bartolome Baca, Santa Fe, Spanish Archives of New Mexico (SANM) 21:
535. New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (NMSRCA), Santa Fe, New Mexico.
12
September 1897 Court of Private Land Claims filing, SANM 48: 587–588.
13
Vallecito de Lovato deed transfers, SANM 48: 635–678.
14
26 August 1896 Court of Private Land Claims testimony of Merejildo Martinez, SANM 48: 600.
15
29 January 1836 petition of Jose Julian Martinez, Spanish Archives of New Mexico (SANM) reel 23:225–226,
NMSRCA.
16
25 March 1836 Alcalde report, SANM 23: 228, NMSRCA.
17
25 March 1836 Alcalde report, SANM 23: 228, NMSRCA.
18
26 August 1896 Court of Private Land Claims testimony of Merejildo Martinez, SANM 48: 600, NMSRCA.
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
hostilities, a group of former residents returned to the grant and, with the consent of the Prefect of
Rio Arriba County, expanded the local population.19
The political economy of adjudication in New Mexico
Spanish and Mexican land grants, with extensive resources in timber, minerals, and rangelands,
proved attractive investments in the years following the Mexican–American War. Assisted by railroad extensions in the late 19th century, land speculators employed a variety of legal and extralegal
tactics to consolidate titles to the vast community land grants spread throughout New Mexico.
This speculation, fueled by economic uncertainty in Britain and the eastern United States in the
late 19th century, benefited from weak adjudication procedures, and aggressive speculation tactics.
Between 1848 and 1854, there was no mechanism to adjudicate land claims in New Mexico.
California was the prize of the War and garnered most of the immediate interest. In 1854, U.S.
Congress established the New Mexico Office of Surveyor General, the federal official charged
with administering the adjudication process. One of the tasks of the Surveyor General was to receive claims on Spanish and Mexican grants and forward recommendations to Congress as to
their validity. Congress reserved final authority to confirm or reject claims. The procedure proved
less than equitable. Three Surveyors General were active land speculators while in office. In Petaca
the Surveyor General actively pursued investors and brokered the sale of the grant while serving
as the official federal adjudication authority in the Territory. Many of the brokers pursuing land
grants were Santa Fe attorneys or business agents for investment firms. In the speculation of both
Petaca and Vallecito, a prominent Santa Fe attorney, and chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, Charles Gildersleeve, served the financial interests of commercial speculators in efforts to acquire the grants.
Gildersleeve, as with all the land grant brokers, was a member of the Santa Fe Ring, a group of
prominent lawyers, businessmen and federal officials. The Ring pursued Eastern U.S. and British
investors with brochures touting the rich resources and prime investment potential available in
New Mexico.20 They scoured their networks and connections in pursuit of capital to purchase
timber, mining and grazing lands. They profited by their ability to serve as the middlemen for outside financial interests. Speculating in land grants required placing Spanish-speaking brokers in
the field to acquire titles, locate grant papers, or negotiate legal or purchase agreements with
land grant communities, activities impossible for most investors. As adjudication procedures
changed over time so too did speculation tactics and investment patterns. These tactics confused
and tangled the histories of deed transfers and settlement patterns, often throwing legitimate
claims in doubt. Amado Chaves, a mayor of Santa Fe during the territorial period and the first
secretary of Education for New Mexico after statehood, was one such broker. Chaves was prolific
in his ability to acquire titles, negotiate legal contracts between Anglo attorneys and Hispano settlers, attract investors, and quiet title to community land grants. Chaves pitched community land
grants to prominent territorial politicians and claimed expertise in an elaborate scheme to acquire
vast acreages of common-property lands:
19
20
Translation of 20 March 1848 decree of Salvador Lucero, SANM 44: 238, NMSRCA.
H. Lamar, The Far Southwest: 1846–1912, A Territorial History, Albuquerque, 2000.
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
93
If you will get your friends to employ me with a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars per
month and actual traveling expenses I will at once start and secure the interests and get them
under contract. I can secure one third of all the interests for proving them up. And will secure
contracts to buy the other two thirds very cheap, not to exceed fifty cents per acre. I can in
this way secure not less than one hundred thousand acres the work of proving up would be
done through Mr. A. B. McMillan as atty. When the work is done I would agree first to have
all the money advanced returned to the party who advanced the same and then divide profits
as follows. One third to the parties who furnished the money, one third to McMillan for his
services in doing the legal work and one third to A C [Amado Chaves] for doing the field
work. The parties advancing the money to secure contracts would have to furnish the necessary expenses for getting the witnesses to attend court and for publication. This would
be a nominal expense compared with the value of the land to be acquired.21
For British and East Coast investors, brokers such as Chaves made legible the complex legal,
cultural, and political matrix of land grant property relations and adjudication procedures. Their
efforts exposed land grant communities to the predatory efforts of speculative investors. They manipulated legal procedures and used political cronies so that in many cases, Petaca and Vallecito
included, legitimate claims were, effectively, lost before ever entering official adjudication
procedures.
Vallecito and Petaca entered the adjudication process during the first months of 1875. More
than 20 years after the Office of Surveyor General was first established, an attorney named Samuel
Ellison submitted separate claims for both grants to Surveyor General James Proudfit. In the Vallecito application, Ellison claimed to represent ‘the inhabitants of the town of Vallecito in the
County of Rio Arriba.’22 In the Petaca petition, Ellison presented himself as the representative
of the ‘heirs and legal representatives of the parties named as grantees.’23 In both cases, Proudfit
deposed witnesses on the same day Ellison filed the claim. In February Proudfit produced a sketch
map of Petaca (Fig. 1), and wrote a half-page report to Congress, stating ‘I have no doubt that the
papers of original title are genuine and that present claimants are acting in good faith, I therefore
recommend that this grant be confirmed to Jose Julian Martinez and others named in the act of
possession or their legal representatives by Congress.’24 In October Proudfit forwarded his Vallecito de Lovato sketch map (Fig. 2) to Congress along with a half-page report recommending the
approval of the Vallecito claim.25 In both cases, the recommendations were based on the testimony of the witnesses Ellison delivered to Proudfit.
Congress ignored Proudfit’s reports. In previous cases, confirmed claims were later shown to be
fraudulent and Congress looked with increasing scrutiny at recommendations for confirmation.26
While Proudfit has received scrutiny in his role as a participant in land grant rejections, Ellison
has not. Yet his role in Vallecito and Petaca, particularly in light of the unusual recommendation
procedures and the intense speculation that followed, is suspicious: Ellison made an anonymous
21
22
23
24
25
26
Amado Chaves Papers, 1698–1931, Box 1, NMSRCA.
20 May 1875 Ellison petition, SANM 23: 536–540.
Transcript of 1875 Ellison petition, SANM 51-654-663, NMSRCA.
13 October 1875 Proudfit report, SANM 51: 663, NMSRCA.
13 October 1875 Proudfit report, SANM 23: 577–578.
Montoya, Translating Property (note 4); Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits (note 3).
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
Fig. 1. Surveyor General sketch map for the Petaca land grant.
claim; Proudfit accepted affidavits of unknown witnesses; a recommendation for confirmation followed. While Proudfit was an active land speculator, the Surveyor General had no authority to
recommend the confirmation of land grants until a claim for the land grant was filed. The anonymous claim by Ellison served two important purposes. First, no market in land grants could exist
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
95
Fig. 2. Surveyor General sketch map for the Town of Vallecito de Lovato land grant.
until petition was filed with the Surveyor General. Investors hesitated to invest in grants that were
not, at the very least, recommended for confirmation. Prior to Ellison’s petitions, no Petaca deeds
had changed hands; following Ellison’s application and Proudfit’s recommendation, an active
market in deeds began. Second, by making an anonymous claim, the market in deeds could
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
operate without the knowledge of current Petaca residents. As this case study documents, speculators did not purchase deeds from Petaca residents but instead from the non-resident heirs of the
original settlers named on the Mexican grant documents, a strategy that kept locals in the dark.
Ellison held financial interests in land grants in New Mexico, investigated investment opportunities for land grant speculators, and delivered affidavits to witnesses in support of claims. In Petaca
and Vallecito, he played a critical role.27
Proudfit resigned in 1876 under pressure from the General Land Office and was replaced by
Henry Atkinson who almost immediately ran afoul of the General Land Office. In a number of
cases he submitted expanded resurveys for grants owned by business associates. He co-owned
four companies that invested in land grants, actively recruited buyers for land grants under adjudication in his office, and in the case of two grants, Petaca included, purchased deeds and allowed
staff members to purchase deeds for land grants under consideration by his office.28
The speculation of Petaca and Vallecito
Atkinson got right to work on Petaca, expanding Proudfit’s 48,000-acre sketch map to more
than 185,000 acres.29 Shortly thereafter, a group of prominent ranching and mining speculators,
led by Gildersleeve, began purchasing Petaca deeds from the nonresident heirs of the men named
in the original Mexican muniments.30 This was a common tactic among the Santa Fe Ring and
would usually culminate with a claim before the Surveyor General that the grant was a private
grant given only to the individuals named in the grant documents. The purchasers of Petaca included Gildersleeve, John Thomson (a commercial grazing operator and partner with Thomas
Catron, the most notorious member of the Santa Fe Ring, and Surveyor General Atkinson in
the Boston and New Mexico Cattle Company), and William McBroom, Atkinson’s assistant Surveyor General and a man later convicted of land fraud in the Territory. With the rights of the
original heirs consolidated in Gildersleeve’s control, he formally requested another re-survey.31
For the second time, Atkinson increased the size of the land grant. Atkinson took over from there
and solicited an Iowa investor named S.S. Farwell to purchase the grant.32 Farwell made the purchase and notified his attorney that, ‘(t)he drafts to pay for the Petaca Grant were forwarded to
Gen. Atkinson last Saturday. I trust Mr. Gildersleeve will take measures to perfect the title he
assured me he had as the amount of money is so large it is attended with considerable loss to
have it remain idle.’33
Gildersleeve’s role in the Petaca speculation was similar to the role he played with the Vallecito
de Lovato land grant. In 1889, a group of Boston investors hired Gildersleeve to consolidate the
27
Catron File, Ellison Papers, MSS 29 BC, Series 715, folders 1 and 2, Center for Southwest Research (CSWR), University of New Mexico Libraries, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
28
Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits (note 3); V. Westphall, Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper rio
Grande Region, Albuquerque, 1983.
29
4 June 1877 letter from Ellison to Atkinson, SANM 23: 264–265, NMSRCA.
30
Petaca deeds, SANM 49: 284–371, NMSRCA.
31
27 August 1878 letter from Gildersleeve to Atkinson, SANM 23: 280, NMSRCA.
32
7 June 1895 transcript of CPLC testimony. SANM 44: 153, NMSRCA.
33
25 April 1883 letter from LZ Farwell letter to L.B. Prince. NMSRCA; L. Bradford Prince file, 13988, NMSRCA.
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
97
deeds of two New Mexico land grants, the Ojo del Espiritu del Santo grant, and the Town of Vallecito de Lovato.34 In the case of Vallecito, Gildersleeve was directed to obtain and transfer title to
S. Endicott Peabody, an agent of the Boston firm and a member of one of the wealthiest and most
prominent Boston-area families.35
It took Gildersleeve less than two months to purchase the interests in Vallecito from Maria de
Jesus, the daughter of the only man named in the Mexican grant muniments, and a woman who
never lived on the grant.36 With the grant ownership in the name of Peabody, Gildersleeve and
Atkinson expanded the survey of Vallectio. The General Land Office, however, refused Atkinson’s resurvey:
The examinations of the survey as made in your office are by no means satisfactory and an
improvement in that respect is earnestly desired. Please consult the original records and report on the above cases; meanwhile withdraw the triplicate plats from the local land office.37
Atkinson ignored the GLO protests and proceeded to change the status of both Petaca and Vallecito from a community to a private land grant. The change was important because it meant the
difference between sharing the unalienable common lands with dozens of other claimants or owning the valuable timber stocks and grazing lands outright. In August of 1883, Atkinson recommended that Congress change the status of both grants. In doing so he concocted a theory that
dismissed the entire concept of the community land grant:
It was a custom in those days, on account of the danger existing from hostile Indians in some
localities, for persons receiving concessions to take with them for protection or assistance as
herders, employees to whom they gave small parcels of land to cultivate. But such persons
held no interest in the general commons of the grant, and were not beneficiaries there under. On the record in the case, it is my opinion that the legal and equitable title to his grant
was vested in Jose Julian Martinez, Antonio Martinez, and Francisco Antonio Atencio, as
the sole grantees, and recommends that the same be confirmed to them, as the grant is undoubtedly valid.38
The adjudication of Petaca and Vallecito de Lovato
Atkinson’s tenure as New Mexico Surveyor General ended in 1884. George Julian, appointed
in 1885 after the short tenure of Clarence Pullen, was appointed as a reformer and sent to New
Mexico to eradicate the influence of the Santa Fe Ring. Shortly after arriving in New Mexico,
34
Proceedings of the Rio Grande Irrigation and Colonization Company v. Charles Gildersleeve, New Mexico
Supreme Court Archives, NMSRCA: Box 59, Folder 643.
35
Peabody, the founder of Groton, the elite preparatory school in Massachusetts, was a descendent of John Endecott
(1588–1665), a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the grandfather of Endicott Peabody (1920–1997)
Governor of Massachusetts in the 1960s.
36
Vallecito de Lovato deeds, SANM 51: 676–681.
37
22 March 1883 letter from Commission N.C. McFarland, Department of Interior, General Land Office Atkinson,
SANM 23: 282–283.
38
1 August 1883 report by Atkinson, SANM 23: 287–294, NMSRCA.
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
Julian published an article in The North American Review that made clear his position on the
problem of the Santa Fe Ring in the territory:
They have hovered over the territory [of New Mexico] like a pestilence. To a fearful extent
they have dominated governors, judges, district attorneys, legislatures, surveyors general and
their deputies, marshals, treasurers, county commissioners, and the controlling business interests of the people. They have confounded political distinctions and subordinated everything to the greed for land. The continuous and unchecked ascendancy of one political
party for a quarter of a century has wrought demoralization in the other. [Thomas] Catron
is a leading Republican, and [Charles] Gildersleeve, an equally prominent Democrat, but no
political nomenclature fits them. They are simply traffickers in land grants, and recognized
captains of this controlling New Mexican industry. This tells the whole story. They have a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit. They are politicians for revenue only.39
Julian’s contempt for the Santa Fe Ring didn’t translate into sympathy for common-property
grant heirs. Julian was devoted to the homestead principle and the large community land grants
did not fit that framework.40 In the Petaca reevaluation, Julian suggested that a strict reading of
the Mexican colonization laws demanded that ‘the grant cannot be held legally valid.’41 Julian
acknowledged, though, that the laws governing the distribution of land under Mexico were not
rigorously applied in New Mexico. Despite his reservations, the documents were unchallenged
by the Government’s experts and so Julian suggested that ‘it would be a great hardship to reject
altogether the claim now made, and that justice will be best served by recognizing an equitable
title to the land granted.’
The size of the claim was another matter. ‘Stretching grants by extravagant surveys,’ he wrote
‘involves this grant in suspicion, and strengthens the reason I have given for the necessity of a resurvey.’ The GLO shared Julian’s concern but also concurred with Julian that the claim appeared
to be a valid and common-property land grant. The GLO ‘recommended the confirmation of the
claim as a community grant for an area not to exceed four square leagues.’42
The Town of Vallecito de Lovato land grant, however, received a more critical reception. ‘It
seems hardly necessary to take time or space to show that a grant was never made in this
case,’ wrote Julian, in noting the irregularity of the grant muniments. ‘The papers show the
fact as plainly and nothing can be said to make it more apparent.’43 In rejecting Vallecito,
however, Julian confronted two adjudication standards that favored the grant: (i) the grant
was settled continuously after 1824 and (ii) prima facie evidence existed of a land grant at
the time of U.S. control of the Territory in 1848. Both standards were established during
the adjudication of California claims and previous New Mexico Surveyors General invoked
the California standards in all New Mexico adjudications. Preexisting settlements at the
time of U.S. authority were universally recommended for approval. All previous Surveyors
39
G. Julian, Land-stealing in New Mexico, The North American Review 145 (1887) 25.
H. Williams, George W. Julian and land Reform in New Mexico, 1885–1889, Agricultural History 41 (1967) 71–84.
41
17 April 1886 report by Julian, SANM 23: 296–305, NMSRCA.
42
30 June 1887 report of the Secretary of Interior, as cited in: J.J. Bowden, Private Land Claims in the Southwest,
Master’s thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1969, 1040–1041.
43
12 May 1886 report by Julian, SANM 23: 587–594.
40
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
99
General held that the existence of a land grant in 1846 provided prima facie evidence of a legitimate land grant.
As to the first issue, the Town of Vallecito de Lovato land grant was mentioned in the muniments of the 1836 Petaca land grant. This along with additional evidence and testimony proved
continual settlement, a point on which Julian agreed. As to the second issue, Julian agreed that
the land grant was occupied when the U.S. invaded New Mexico and when the U.S. signed the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Julian overcame the issue by advancing a new legal theory to explain the appearance of common property land tenure arrangements:
It may be claimed that as the evidence shows, there was a settlement on the land at the time
the United States authorities took possession of this Territory, this is sufficient proof of
a grant, under the instructions issued by the Interior Department for the Government of
this office. I am not of this opinion. The instructions referred to contain these provisions:
existence of city at time of U.S. control ‘may be considered by you as prima facie evidence
of a grant to such corporation, or to individuals under whom the lot holders claim.’ It is
quite evident that the cities and villages referred to in the instructions are those and those
only, that were recognized as such by the Spanish and Mexican governments, and to which
were granted rights and privileges as cities and villages.
Julian recommended in his 1886 report that if the General Land Office adopt a prior settlement
doctrine in the adjudication of the Town of Vallecito de Lovato, it should do so only in regard to
the village proper, excluding the common lands. ‘The parties who took possession of [Vallecito]’,
Julian speculated in his report, ‘may have been trespassers.’
Despite Julian’s reports, Congress continued to ignore New Mexico. Rather than continue with
adjudication through the office of the Surveyor General, Congress had begun to consider a different approach. Following the recommendation of the territorial Governor, Congress created the
Court of Private Land Claims (CPLC) in 1891 and charged it with the task of adjudicating all
Spanish and Mexican land grants made in the territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah
and the states of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. With the new court, land grant heirs were
now required to make adversarial claims before a five-judge panel appointed by the President
and approved by the Senate, with the interests of the United States represented by an attorney
appointed by the President. Perhaps most importantly, where the Surveyor General adjudicated
claims according to ‘the laws, usages, and customs of Spain and Mexico,’ the CPLC followed
a new directive: ‘all claims confirmed had to be lawfully and regularly derived from Spain, Mexico, or a State of Mexico having power to make grants.’44 The attorney appointed by the President
to represent the interests of the United States, Matthew Reynolds, interpreted this provision as
a new, more stringent standard for land grant adjudication.45 During his tenure he opposed every
common-property claim before the CPLC. He rigorously applied Julian’s theory that Spanish and
Mexican common property land grants were only temporary permits for possession and thus fell
into the public domain following the treaty.
44
R. Bradfute, The Court of Private Land Claims: the Adjudication of Spanish and Mexican Land Grant Titles, 1891–
1904, Albuquerque, 1975.
45
M. Reynolds, Spanish and Mexican Land Laws: New Spain and Mexico, St. Louis, 1895.
100
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
The court of private land claims
The CPLC transformed the patterns of speculation in land grants. The Court made life difficult
for people like Gildersleeve. Under scrutiny, claims to make community land grants private were
easily overcome. A new tactic of dispossession, however, took its place. Early in 1893, an attorney
named George Hill Howard, working with Amado Chaves, filed claims for both Petaca and Vallecito. These were the first claims made by the actual residents of Vallecito.46 In the winter of 1892
and 1893, dozens of Petaca and Vallecito residents entered into legal services contracts with
Howard. In the contracts, the attorney received, ‘una tercera parte indivisa de su derecho e interes,
en y a la dicha merced o sitio, e recompense a dicho Howard por sus servicios (one-third part to the
rights and interests of the grant of land as compensation to Howard for his services).’47
Howard, along with Amado Chaves, entered into a similar legal arrangement with residents on
the Piedra Lumbre land grant in 1894. After confirmation was won, Hill filed a partition suit in
New Mexico district court.48 Under Spanish and Mexican law, the common lands of a land grant
could not be sold. An 1876 Territorial statue, however, provided for a part owner of common
property to sever interests through auction. As Ebright explained, ‘[t]he grantees would receive
a small amount of money for their valuable resource, and the attorney who had secured confirmation of the grant would end up owning most of the grant himself.’49 On Piedra Lumbre, Chaves
and Howard ‘got the best part of the grant. The partition was actually made and the grant is not
now in common at all.’50 Howard held the same contracts with Petaca and Vallecito residents.
The Petaca case went to trial in 1896.
Reynolds attacked the claims of Farwell and the actual residents living in Petaca:
It is contended on behalf of the United States, that if the Governor had any power to make
the grant at all, which it denies, still it is an imperfect grant, not having been confirmed by
the Territorial Deputation, or proper authority, and that in no event, if it be confirmed at all,
can it be confirmed for more than eleven leagues. Next, that it was one of the conditions and
terms of the grant, that they should settle it within five years, that this grant was not settled
until after the occupation of this country by the United States.51
Reynolds also argued that Spain and Mexico never intended to provide title to the common
lands. ‘[T]he persons placed in possession are entitled only to the allotments which they received
and are not entitled to the lands within the out-boundaries, the disposition of which was retained
by the authorities of Mexico, and passed to the United States.’ Finally, Reynolds challenged the
survey, relying on evidence of forgery that, he argued, explained why the boundaries expanded
following requests for re-surveys by Ellison, Gildersleeve, and Farwell: ‘it is contended that the
boundaries in this case have been changed. Next, it is further contended that there has been
46
17 February 1893 petition, SANM 44: 7–17, NMSRCA.
14 January 1893 legal contract for George Hill Howard and Petaca claimants, L. Bradford Prince collection,
NMSRCA.
48
Amado Chaves collection, box 2, folder 17, NMSRCA.
49
Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits (note 3), 43.
50
July 21, 1903 letter from Amado Chaves to George Hill Howard, Amado Chaves collection, NMSRCA.
51
Transcript of 1896 CPLC trial, SANM, 44: 99–236, NMSRCA.
47
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101
a forgery in this case, that an erasure has been made in the title papers, and that alteration has
been made in one of the boundaries, which may be plainly seen by anyone.’
The court rejected Reynolds’ arguments and confirmed Petaca as a common-property land
grant.52 Farwell owned only the private plots of the three men named in the muniments and therefore shared use rights for the commons with all the residents of Petaca. The Chief Justice explained in the opinion that
‘[t]he testimony. shows that Jose Julian Martinez and Francisco Antonio Atencio were
a committee on behalf of the proposed settlers to petition for the grant on their behalf. It
was not an unusual thing in Spanish and Mexican custom. From the time of delivery,
etc. the original settlers began to occupy, cultivate and improve.This occupancy was not
continuous, nor was the improvement great. The condition of Indian hostilities during all
that period necessarily precluded the continuous occupation and cultivation of the land.
But there is nothing in the case to show that the settlers did not take the land in good faith,
and make every reasonable effort to occupy and cultivate it, and the fact that there is now
found upon the tract a considerable community, in part at least descended from those
same original settlers ought to remove any doubt upon that subject.’53
The Vallecito case was not tried before the CPLC until October of 1897. Just prior to the trial,
the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision in Sandoval v U.S., a case concerning the San Miguel
del Bado land grant. The Sandoval decision gave legal life to Reynolds’s theory on Spanish and
Mexican common property and rejected claims for the common portion of the grant. In rejecting
the common-property claims, the Court effectively invalidated the very existence of commonproperty ownership during Spanish and Mexican grant making.54
With case law now established, Reynolds advanced a series of arguments in the Vallecito case.
First, Reynolds argued that no authority in New Mexico existed to provide grants of land between
1821 and 1824. He based this argument on the discrepancy between grant muniments and Mexican property law. The Vallecito de Lovato grant was made after Mexican Independence, but before Mexico promulgated laws covering the disposal of the public domain. While Mexico
recognized all grants made between 1821 and 1824, Reynolds suggested U.S. Courts should
not. Even if the grant was judged valid, Reynolds argued that the language in the granting papers
only provided possession, not title, of the grant, as per the Sandoval decision. The entire grant
should be invalidated, he argued, or, at the very least, the commons should fall into the United
States public domain. The CPLC, hemmed in by the Sandoval decision, agreed with Reynolds’s
entire argument and rejected all claims for the Town of Vallecito de Lovato, including the individual private lots on which settlers still lived.55 Peabody appealed the Vallecito de Lovato case to
the Supreme Court. In 1899, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Court of Private
Land Claims. Again, all claims, even those for homesites in the village on the grant were denied.
The entire grant fell into the public domain.56
52
53
54
55
56
5 September 1896 Opinion authored by Justice Sluss, SANM I, 44: 54–67, NMSRCA.
5 September 1896 Opinion authored by Justice Sluss, SANM I, 44: 54–67, NMSRCA.
U. S. v. Sandoval 1897, 167 U.S. 278.
SANM I, 48: 586–604.
S. Endicott Peabody v. U.S. 175 U.S. 546 (1899).
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D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
Having won in the Vallecito case, Reynolds turned his attention back to the Petaca case. According to provisions in the act establishing the Court of Private Land Claims, parties had six
months following the filing of a CPLC decision to file an appeal before the Supreme Court. Reynolds was responsible for filing CPLC decisions. He did not file the Petaca decision until almost
three years later, after the Sandoval decision. With the Sandoval decision in place, Reynolds filed
the 1896 CPLC decision and immediately appealed the case. Farwell’s attorney argued to the
Supreme Court that the appeal was impossible given the six-month rule. The Supreme Court,
however, noted that the six-month period commenced following the filing of the ruling, not the
date of the ruling.57
The case covering the Petaca claims appeared before the Supreme Court in 1899. The justices
agreed with Reynolds and reversed the CPLC decision. The result was a grant reduced to 1392.1
acres, the total acreage of private homesites.58 The commons fell into the public domain. CPLC
Justice Wilbur Stone, who had voted with the majority in confirming Petaca as a community
grant, condemned the outcome:
[Petaca] had been bought by one of the Farwells of Chicago, who established sawmills and
lumber camps in the pineries and for ten years shipped lumber by rail from Tres Piedras to
the markets of Colorado and New Mexico, but had reserved the best portion of the pineries
for future use. The [Supreme] court found that the original grant comprised only a paltry
strip about five miles long and a few rods wide, embracing the little garden patches on the
Cañon of Petaca Creek, belonging to some poor Mexicans, who were made all the poorer
by having the ownership decreed to them by the court. The great pineries yet untouched
were turned over to the Public Domain of Uncle Sam, to be gobbled up by lumber poachers,
who will take care that they cut off the best part first.59
Conclusion
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded the Mexican territory of Nuevo Mexico to the United
States. But it took the actions of speculators and federal officials to produce the transformation in
property relations that allowed for administrative control. Spanish and Mexican grant heirs confronted a nearly impossible adjudication process during New Mexico’s territorial period. Legitimate land grant heirs in northern New Mexico found themselves squeezed between two forces of
dispossession. On one side, the Santa Fe Ring and commercial speculators pursued the most valuable timber, grazing and mining land in the territory. One the other side, federal officials in the
General Land Office and the Court of Private Land Claims sought to overcome common-property
claims in pursuit of settlement patterns consistent with U.S. land policy. They denied the very
existence of common-property land tenure. The pressures of aggressive speculation, onerous
adjudication procedures and contrived legal theories of Spanish and Mexican grant making led
to the rejection of millions of acres of common-property claims.
57
58
59
U.S. v Pena, 175 U.S. 500 (1899).
U.S. v. Peña, 175 U.S. 500 (1899).
Bowden, Private Land Claims in the Southwest (note 42), City, 1045.
D. Correia / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 87–103
103
Petaca and Vallecito were not unusual cases. As with many community land grants in New
Mexico, lawyers adept at manipulating legal adjudication procedures, and at least three Surveyors
General, pursued legal and extra-legal means to control resources, acquire titles and legal contracts from heirs and profit from the market in land grants. These actions, committed before heirs
had a chance to access the courts, established the conditions of dispossession for the common portions of the grants. Gildersleeve and Surveyors General Proudfit and Atkinson manipulated land
grant adjudication procedures in Petaca and Vallecito. Their machinations muddled the adjudication process, and contributed to the rejection of both claims. The transformation of the land grant
commons from a village-level, subsistence resource to an investment arena for commercial interests was a direct result of intense investment speculation and the failure of the United States to live
up to its treaty obligations.
The U.S. Congress briefly understood the importance of the political context of adjudication
and the question of fairness and equity in considering land claims. Adjudication reforms begun
in the late-1880s stemmed from a crisis in confidence of the Surveyor General system of adjudication to ‘inviolably respect’ Spanish and Mexican land claims. While the shift to the Court of
Private Land Claims established a set of requirements that proved more onerous for legitimate
claimants, it should be noted that the intent was to reform an unworkable process. The Santa
Fe Ring, however, found new ways to manipulate the system. George Hill Howard and Amado
Chaves represented Petaca and Vallecito residents, as well as the claimants of other land grants,
for a one-third stake in the common property. Had those claims been confirmed, Howard could
have filed partition suits in New Mexico courts to receive payment for services. Thus even confirmed common-property claims were often privatized.
The legal, political and social structures of territorial New Mexico arranged and aligned adjudication procedures in anticipation of investment and resource exploitation. The ‘oligarchy of
land sharks,’ to use Julian’s phrase for the Santa Fe Ring, conspired with the most powerful federal officials to bend, break and evade legal standards and benefited from adjudication procedures
practically designed for commercial speculation.60
Acknowledgements
The research described here was funded through a National Science Foundation DDRI Grant
(#0503151), a Community Forestry Research Fellowship, and a University of Kentucky Dissertation Year Fellowship. Thanks also to the staff at the Center for Southwest Research and the
New Mexico State Records Center and Archives. Previous versions of this paper were immeasurably improved by Graeme Wynn and three anonymous referees.
60
Julian, Land-stealing in New Mexico (note 39), 29.